Responding to crisis

Governor Jon Corzine is in the process of rolling out his three-pronged plan to combat violent crime in New Jersey. Yesterday he focused on the law enforcement prong and today he talked about prevention. The third prong would focus on reducing prison recidivism.

I wish the Governor a lot of luck with this. He'll need it. If this was an easy problem, it would already have been solved.

The law enforcement initiative has two basic approaches. The first is fairly straightforward - it seeks to tighten gun laws and to lengthen sentences for the use of illegal guns. You can be sure that the NRA will be up in arms (pardon the pun) about any attempt to crack down on guns.

The real problem, though, is that most of the guns used in New Jersey crimes are purchased elsewhere. So short of stopping cars on the interstate and searching them, it's going to be difficult for this part of the initiative to be much more than window dressing. It'll make us feel better to hand out longer sentences, but with over-crowding and parole, no one will serve the full sentence.

The other part of the law enforcement segment focuses on using technology to allow local police to work smarter. It's a good idea. Requiring police to share data and creating a clearinghouse to analyze mega-trends puts police on the same map as street gangs. After all, a gang member can jump in a car and be in another jurisdiction in a matter of minutes. To coordinate with another jurisdiction, however, may take weeks.

To accomplish this, the state is going to help local and county police purchase proper technology and train personnel to use it properly. This means it will be months, if not years, before this part of the initiative bears much fruit. But it needs to be done. It's surprising to discover that police don't have the proper resources to utilize what amounts to electronic filing of forms and statistical analysis. While I'm sure this will make the local efforts more effective, it doesn't seem to me that what has been missing is someone at the top.

It is the idea of focusing on prevention that gives me the most hope for a long-term solution. It targets truancy and delinquency, job training, and summer employment. I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't target our schools. The best way, I believe, to keep a kid out of street gangs is to give him/her a future. The best way I know of to do that is to have schools that target high-risk kids for intervention programs. This means not only younger children being diverted from a life of crime before they can start, but alternative schools that aim at moving teens from desperation to quality employment.

But it also means moving entire neighborhoods, and sometimes cities, out of a desperation that has existed for generations. This is not a simple task. It includes weed-and-seed initiatives that helps lower-income home-owners provide necessary repairs on their houses. It involves putting police on patrol in areas that, quite frankly, they'd rather not be. It means finding a real way to help grow prosperity from the ground up - by helping residents create local businesses (even micro-businesses) and by helping make them profitable. Sadly, I see no mention of this in the Governor's words.

It's risky to try and guess what the Governor might say about the remaining prong of his initiative, but the idea of trying to cut recidivism is the right place to start. Part of that is addressing the very real epidemic of substance abuse and addiction in the prison population. But it also means finding ways for ex-convicts to learn job-skills needed to become successful when they are released from prison.

The hardest part, though, will lie in finding the money to pay for all of this. It is good to impose control, coordination, and assessment on the various programs that already exist. But we can't be fooled into thinking that the only thing missing is a person at the top. That would amount to rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. But control, coordination, and assessment are cheap - millions instead of billions. But real success is rarely cheap. Sometimes, though, you beat the odds.